Nerves, Obstacles, Mountain Can't Halt His Proposal

Sarah and Jonathan Williams are pictured at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia. They were married on Aug. 30, 2008, and now live in South Windsor.

Sarah and Jonathan Williams are pictured at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia. They were married on Aug. 30, 2008, and now live in South Windsor. (Courtesy of the Williamses)

M.A.C. LYNCHSpecial to The Courant

Love Story: Jonathan and Sarah Williams climbed a mountain, literally, to begin their life together.

The closer Jonathan Williams drove to Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, the more obstacles were thrown in his path. Within a few miles of the mountain, his girlfriend had an asthma attack, and he was pulled over for speeding and issued a ticket. As he began driving up the mountain, his dashboard flashed that his gas tank was almost empty. In the backdrop, the sun was close to setting.

"We can come back tomorrow or another time," Sarah said, but Jonathan was determined to reach the top.

He drove all day from Philadelphia to propose on the highest peak in the eastern United States the day after Thanksgiving 2007. "I was pretty nervous about everything. I was nervous because of the enormity of the question."

When they parked near the peak, the path to the lookout tower was closed. With a few minutes of daylight remaining, Jonathan found a trail to a narrow ledge, precariously bent down on his knee and asked Sarah to marry him. It wasn't as he planned, but "there's going to be challenges in life," he thought.

Jonathan's mother had died when he was in high school, and he gave Sarah her ring for their engagement. "It fit perfectly," Sarah says.

When they returned from the trail, "I put the car in neutral and coasted it down the hill" to the first gas station, Jonathan says. The next day they drove to Durham, N.C., where Sarah was pursuing a master's degree in public health and Jonathan was getting his teaching certificate.

While studying for a master's degree in Australia in 2002, Jonathan worked at a hardware store on the beach. He heard an American accent in the store one day, and when he talked to the customer, he discovered she was from Connecticut. On Thanksgiving 2003, when Jonathan was living back home in West Hartford, he called that customer, who was studying in Paris. Sarah also was in Paris visiting that customer, who had been a former coworker of hers.

A few weeks later, Jonathan and Sarah, who was working at U.S. Surgical and living in New Haven, exchanged e-mails and decided to meet at a restaurant in Middletown. They talked until the place closed, stood outside talking in the cold for another hour, and chatted for two more hours in Sarah's car.

They saw each other for 10 consecutive days after that meeting, until Sarah left to visit a friend in Ecuador.

"I felt comfortable with him. He was easy to talk to. I trusted him," says Sarah, who e-mailed Jonathan every day from Ecuador. "I had a real strong feeling it was going somewhere."

"This could be it," Jonathan thought. "I didn't want to get ahead of myself," but "I felt like she would accept me. … I could be myself."

Five months later, Jonathan put Sarah to the test, telling her he wanted to run across the United States.

"This is different," Sarah thought, "but I think I kind of like this guy, so I figured I have to go with it. … I wasn't willing to say goodbye to him."

Sarah did more than go along with his plan. "I wouldn't have been able to do it without her," says Jonathan, who ran cross-country at Fordham University as an undergraduate. He had planned to run from Newport Beach, Calif., to Newport, R.I., over 5½ months, but finished in four months and two days because often he couldn't find places to stay and had to keep running.

Sarah provided logistical support, such as calling the state police in Arizona to get permission for Jonathan to run on the highway when there was no alternative route. She flew to Flagstaff, Ariz., to meet Jonathan a few days after his 25th birthday, which he had spent in the desert sleeping in a stranger's garage.

"When there was nowhere to sleep outside of Rolla, Mo., she got on the phone and put me in touch with track runners at the University of Missouri" branch campus, Jonathan says. He also stayed at several fire stations.

"I always felt relieved when he was at a fire department," Sarah says, because he would sleep in a bed and be fed. Sarah checked his e-mail from May 8 to September 10, 2005, and greeted him when he finished. "By the end of his run, he was very thin and hairy."

"It was the toughest thing I've ever done," says Jonathan, who averaged 30-40 miles a day, and did not cut his hair or shave during the entire trek, in keeping with the "Forrest Gump" movie character.

Jonathan's father, Bill Williams, a former opinion page editor at The Hartford Courant, met him in Oklahoma City, Okla., and his sister was in Tulsa, when he ran through the state.

When Jonathan ended his journey, Sarah was completing a master's in health administration and applying for the graduate program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

"She supported me, and I wanted to support her," Jonathan says.

After several presentations at schools about his trip, Jonathan decided to go into teaching and moved to North Carolina in 2006 to study near Sarah. They were married on August 30, 2008, at Jonathan's sister's historic home in West Chester, Pa.

They worked in North Carolina for two years after they completed their studies, but wanting to be closer to their families, they moved to Rockville, Md., in 2010. Sarah worked in regulatory affairs and nutrition and Jonathan taught at Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School in Tacoma Park, Md., where he was named Teacher of the Year.

In September 2013, their daughter Natalie Patricia was born, the first grandchild in Sarah's family. "That strengthened the pull to be closer to family," Sarah says, and prompted their move back to Connecticut last July.

They recently bought a home in South Windsor, Sarah's hometown, and she is working at Nerac Inc. in Tolland doing consulting work. Jonathan is working at Fleet Feet Sports in West Hartford while he applies for teaching jobs in social studies and explores nonprofit and government relations opportunities.

He has continued running and persuaded Sarah to run marathons with him. They ran the Boston Marathon in 2012, and today, Sarah and Jonathan will run their fourth and 10th marathons respectively, in Providence.

Sarah is glad to be running with Jonathan, she says. "He keeps things interesting. He challenges me to step out of my comfort zone."